To hide or not to hide SSID
Our wireless router is an E2500 Linksys with dual-band support but we are forced to use 2.4GHz on our laptops due to the comparability of the adapter. The connection is is password protected using the WPA2 protocal.
Is it safe to unhide our password protected SSID within range of an apartment complex?
Is it safe to unhide our password protected SSID within range of an apartment complex?
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@frugalmule - Thanks and I was happy to help. You should be fine in your apartment building just keeping your wireless password very secure.
... Thinkpads_User
... Thinkpads_User
I agree to the above. There is no point in hiding SSID's. Actually hiding it creates more problems and makes it even less secure. A hidden SSID causes the PC's that connect to it communicate constantly with it to keep the connection going, and that causes more traffic that can be intercepted by the hackers. Part of that traffic is unencryped, including the part that shows the SSID.
Hiding the SSID makes it that much more difficult for somebody to attempt to hack into the network, sure.
...but it also makes it that much more difficult and inconvenient to connect YOUR devices to the network. It takes extra steps to manually enter the SSID, and you can't take advantage of the automated "scan, select, connect" wizards that most WiFi devices would present by default. I'd also be concerned about cheaper WiFi devices that (as a poor design decision by the OEM) do not support manually typing in an SSID. These devices you can't connect to the network at all.
IMHO, I think if you have a WPA2 encrypted network with a strong passphrase, you should be plenty safe, even if your SSID is visible to the world.
And, I feel that if the resources on your network are so sensitive, so confidential that you are legitimately concerned about the minuscule chance that your neighbour will break into your network and beat your WPA2 encryption... you probably shouldn't be exposing those resources on a wireless network in the first place.